The U.S. State Department recently announced that Amos Hochstein, currently the special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, will take over as the State Department's top international energy diplomat.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is a massive piece of financial reform legislation that I voted for and was signed by President Obama in 2010. Was it perfect? Of course not. No massive piece of legislation is perfect -- and that's why we constantly work to improve the law.

Russia's economy is both cursed and blessed by oil. Now is the time to grab the bull by the horns and take an initiative that will provide decades of non-oil based revenues and millions of new jobs that capitalize on Russia's bright, young, technologically gifted generation.

The World Blind Union and its members and supporters in the negotiation are now concerned that that Obama Administration and the European Commission are making demands that will render the treaty far less useful, or even derail the negotiations entirely.

Politics and entertainment may not be so far removed from each other. Politicians and filmmakers are two separate divisions, yet both share the ability to ignite change, or shift the patterns of traditional thinking.

In his 2011 School of International Service commencement address, then-Peace Corps director Aaron Williams noted that "service is not a moment, it's a mindset." For Peace Corps and other service volunteers, the years spent in formal service are just the beginning.

Do yourself a favor, and don't go see Zero Dark Thirty. Don't encourage film-making that at best offers ambiguity about torture, and at worst endorses it. Spend the two and a half hours and the $10 on something more valuable, and moral.

The entertainment industry should no longer fear technological change. It should no longer cling to a precarious balance on the roof of an industrial structure constructed long ago. It's time to look on technology as an opportunity, and to conquer its fear of the unknown.

The MPAA and NATO are panicking because they don't know how to replace revenues lost not to piracy, but to newer commercial content platforms like Netflix or YouTube. This is a better explanation for the brinksmanship over the now-tabled SOPA/PIPA legislation.